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ABSTRACT
Harakaat Al-Shabaab Al-Mujaahiduun (henceforth Al-Shabaab) is an active insurgent group in southern Somalia battling against the foreign forces and foreign-backed Somali forces. Despite recruiting both in Somalia and in the diaspora, this insurgency movement continues to increasingly recruit more local Somali youth than diaspora Somalis or non-Somalis. This article suggests that Al-Shabaab solicits support from diverse youth who – due to a confluence of factors – join the insurgency movement in various ways. The article reveals how the movement’s methods are flexible insofar as it skilfully recruits both powerful clans and marginalised clans. This pattern tests the limits of the Somali federal government in Mogadishu who have yet to develop innovative approaches to challenge and contain Al-Shabaab. The government failure not only allows Al-Shabaab to successfully carry out its operations but also to sustain itself in the midst of local communities. Through interviews with former Al-Shabaab youth, the article explores youth recruiting efforts and finds that the militant movement pursues various sophisticated means to lure numerous youth into its ranks.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Interviews with A. G. and M. M., Al-Shabaab defectors, Mogadishu, Somalia, 6 May 2016.
2. Hansen, Al-Shabaab in Somalia.
3. Hellsten, “Radicalisation and Terrorist Recruitment”; and Meleagrou-Hitchens, “ICSR Insight – Al-Shabaab.” One exception is Botha, and Abdile, “Radicalisation and al-Shabaab Recruitment.”
4. Botha, “Political Socialization”; and Joosse, Bucerius, and Thompson, “Narratives and Counternarratives.”
5. Keen, “The Economic Functions.”
6. Hansen, Al-Shabaab in Somalia; and Marchal, “A Tentative Assessment.”
7. Ibid.
8. It should be cautious that stories often provided by Al-Shabaab defectors can be reliable on a research study or other purposes unless employed with critical analysis or used other sources for triangulation.
9. Focus group discussions, Mogadishu, April and July 2016.
10. Ingiriis, “From Al-Itihaad to Al-Shabaab,” 2033–52; and Ingiriis, “The Invention of Al-Shabaab in Somalia,” 217–37.
11. Almeida, Social Movements, 9.
12. Higazi, “Social Mobilization and Collective Violence,” 107–35.
13. See note 10 above.
14. Hellsten, “Radicalisation and Terrorist Recruitment”; Meleagrou-Hitchens, “ICSR Insight – Al-Shabaab”; and Sunday Nation, “How Poverty and Search for Identity.”
15. Fund for Peace, “Fragile States Index.”
16. Hansen, Al-Shabaab in Somalia, 2, 9, 19, 28, 45.
17. Waxsansheeg, “Halkan Ka Daawo.”
18. Fieldwork ethnographic observations in Hargeysa (Somaliland), July–August 2016 and April–May 2018.
19. YouTube, “Daawo warbixin cajiib ah.”
20. Anonymous, “Banana Wars in Somalia.” See Little, Somalia: Economy without State; Marchal, “Monetary Illegalism and Civil War”; and Mubarak, “The ‘Hidden Hand’.”
21. “La Guerre à Mogadiscio,” 120–5. For the background of the 1990s clanised conflicts, see Caddow, Somalia. For the radicalisation of Islam in Somalia, see Adam, “Islam and Politics in Somalia”; Menkhaus, “Political Islam in Somalia.”
22. Bakonyi, “Between Protest, Revenge and Material Interests.”
23. Interview with Al-Shabaab defectors, Mogadishu, Somalia, 4 May 2016.
24. Interview with Al-Shabaab defectors, Mogadishu, Somalia, April-May 2016. Markus Hoehne noted that there are “many young people who have been lured into joining the group based on religious rhetoric as well as forcibly recruited ones and others who joined for the sake of getting a regular salary. There is also a core of more dedicated fighters, some of who[m] are Somali, others are foreigners.” Hoehne, “No Intervention!” 8. As Marchal noted, forced recruitment is the exception, not the norm. Marchal, “The Rise of a Jihadi Movement,” 40.
25. Jariiban News, “Wiil Ka Mid ah Maxaabiistii Deegaanka Garacad.”
26. Check, “Radical Movements and their Recruitment Strategies”; Gurr, Why Men Rebel.
27. Interview with A. A. M., Mogadishu, Somalia, 6 May 2016.
28. Conversations with family members, including the mother, March 2012 and again May 2019.
29. ICG, “The Islamic State Threat in Somalia’s Puntland State.”
30. Interview with Al-Shabaab defectors, Mogadishu, Somalia, 4 May 2016; interview with Al-Shabaab defectors, Mogadishu, Somalia, 6 May 2016. For a theoretical understanding of the will to die for a cause, see Bloom, Dying to Kill.
31. Marchal, “A Tentative Assessment,” 394. See also Bryden, “The Reinvention of Al-Shabaab.”
32. Hansen, “Somalia – Grievance, Religion, Clan, and Profit,” 127–38. See also Duckitt and Sibley, “Personality, Ideology, Prejudice, and Politics,” 1869.
33. Interview with Al-Shabaab defectors, Mogadishu, Somalia, 4 May 2016; and interview with Al-Shabaab defectors, Mogadishu, Somalia, 6 May 2016; ENCA, “Somali Street Kids Lured into Al-Shabaab.”
34. Interview with C. A. H., Afgooye, via IMO from Afgooye, Somalia, 8 March 2017. In neighbouring Kenya, one study found that 71.5% of Al-Shabaab did not complete secondary level of education, chapter three and none of the returnees (156 in total) interviewed in the study had university level of education. Working with the National Government and Coastal Counties.
35. Interview with A. T., London, 18 June 2017.
36. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics of Machine.
37. Interview with Al-Shabaab defectors, Mogadishu, Somalia, 4 May 2016; interview with Al-Shabaab defectors, Mogadishu, Somalia, 6 May 2016.
38. Ingiriis, “The Invention of Al-Shabaab in Somalia.”
39. New Vision, “Lack of Ideology is Somalia’s Problem.” On counter-ideological attempts, see Abdullah, “Merits and Limits of Counter-ideological Work.”
40. Fieldwork ethnographic observations, Do’oleey, central Somalia, 1 June 2015.
41. Fieldwork ethnographic observations, Mogadishu, May-September 2015, April-August 2016, September-October 2017 and February-June 2018.
42. Madasha Barbaarta TV, “Deg deg waano cajiib ah.”
43. YouTube, “yusra abraar oo cadeeysey.”
44. Ibid.
45. See also Fund for Peace, “Fragile States Index.”
46. Harding, The Mayor of Mogadishu, 164. As Harding recorded: “One of the Al Shabab fighters was a slim, soft-spoken twenty-one year old called Hanad. He’d joined four years earlier, tempted by the prospect of a job and an income. To begin with, he was told he could have no contact with his family, but, in the chaos of Mogadishu, the rules about mobile phones were harder to enforce, and Hanad had finally called his brother Mohamed. It turned out that Mohamed had joined Somalia’s new national army, and was now fighting in the very same sector in Mogadishu,” 179.
47. Ibid. It is estimated that ‘over half its force are children’. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was ‘alarmed at reports that children may constitute a large part of the force recruited and used by al-Shabaab’. Drawing from a UN report, Guterres added that Al-Shabaab ‘used children in combat, with nine-year-olds reportedly taught to use weapons and sent to front lines. Children were also used to transport explosives, work as spies, carry ammunition or perform domestic chores’. The report mentioned that, even though Al-Shabaab ‘was the main perpetrator… the Somali National Army (SNA) and other groups also recruited and used children’. See Africa Research Bulletin, “SOMALIA: Al-Shabaab Forces Target Youth.” Compare Human Rights Watch, “‘It’s like We’re Always in Prison.’”.
48. Interview with A. A. M., IMO interview from Mogadishu, Somalia, 16 December 2016.
49. Interview with Al-Shabaab defectors, Mogadishu, Somalia, April-May 2016.
50. Interview with A. A. M., Mogadishu, Somalia, 10 May 2016. On how the clan structure and the political system in Mogadishu intersect and often overlap, see Ingiriis, ‘Politics as a Profitable Business’.
51. YouTube, “Tarsan oo sheegay in musuq-maasuqa dalka ka jira uu ka khatarsan yahay Al-Shabaab.”
52. Hoehne, “No Intervention!” 8.
53. Laitin and Samatar, Somalia; and Lewis, Blood and Bone.
54. Interview with A. A. H., an Al-Shabaab defector, Mogadishu, Somalia, 4 May 2016.
55. Di Domenicantonio, “‘With God on Our Side”’; and Marchal and Sheikh, “Ahlu Sunna wa l-Jama’a in Somalia.”
56. During the parliamentary election preparations in mid-2016, I observed a meeting between members of the Udeejeen clan, the clan of the first Somali president, where a defector of Al-Shabaab had attended to support the candidacy for the parliament of the former mayor of Mogadishu Mohamoud Ahmed Nur “Tarzan.” I met the defector who was among my former interviewees as soon as he came out of the conference. Observations, Hotel Afrik, Mogadishu, 13 May 2016.
57. Interview with A. A. H., an Al-Shabaab defector, Mogadishu, Somalia, 6 May 2016. For overviews on how Al-Shabaab uses religious and clan ideologies simultaneously, see Anderson and McKnight, “Understanding al-Shabaab”; Solomon, “Somalia’s Al Shabaab.” Marchal seems to surprise that the Jareer received equal representation under Al-Shabaab, so much so in comparison to one dominant Hawiye sub-clan in Jowhar. Cited in Hansen, Al-Shabaab in Somalia, 80.
58. There are reports from Al-Shabaab-held areas that clan elders are issued identification cards. See Caasimada.net, “Kaararka Aqoonsiga.”
59. Focus group discussions held with Afgooye residents in Somalia between 18 and 21 May 2010 and 11 September 2015. For a review, see Ingiriis, ‘Review ‘Al-Shabaab in Somalia’. For Al-Shabaab and clannism, see Anderson and McKnight, ‘Understanding al-Shabaab’. On the politicisation of clan and clanship, see Barnes, “U dhashay, Ku Dhashay”; Luling, “Genealogy as Theory”; and Mohamed, “Kinship and Contract in Somali Politics.”
60. Interview with H. S., Mogadishu, Somalia, 27 February 2018. Hansen has contended that clannism is very weak, quite expectedly, among Al-Shabaab. Hansen, Al-Shabaab in Somalia, 45.
61. Voice of Somalia, “Gabay. Hawiye Ganato Weeyaane.”
62. Interview with A. A. M., Mogadishu, Somalia, 4 May 2016.
63. Ibid.
64. Telephone conversations with F. A. D., 2 July 2015.
65. Marchal, “Joining al-Shabaab in Somalia.”
66. Interview with Al-Shabaab defectors, Mogadishu, Somalia, 5 May 2016; and Caasimada.net, “Al Shabaab oo caana[-]shubtay.”
67. See note 54 above.
68. Focus group discussions held with Afgooye residents in Somalia between 18 and 21 May 2010 and 11 September 2015.
69. Human Rights Watch, “Clashes in Galkayo, Somalia Harm Civilians”; UNSOM, “Press Release”; and Villa Somalia, “Press Statement.”
70. Interview with F. I. E., female army officer, Mogadishu, Somalia, 3 and 5 July 2016.
71. Caasimada.net, “Sawir: Ciidamo ka tirsan.”
72. Interview with government authorities, Mogadishu, May-September 2015 and April-July 2016.
73. See note 62 above.
74. WARSOM, “Ciidamo Iyo Gaadiid Ka Soo Baxsaday Dowlad TFG-da.”
75. Hassan, “Understanding Drivers of Violent Extremism”; Ingiriis, “Al-Shabaab’s Youth Recruitment Project”; and Marchal, “Joining al-Shabaab in Somalia.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Mohamed Haji Ingiriis
Mohamed Haji Ingiriis is pursuing a doctoral degree at the Faculty of History, University of Oxford, the UK. He is also a research associate at the African Leadership Centre, King’s College London He is book reviews editor for the Journal of Somali Studies and Journal of Anglo-Somali Society and is also author of The Suicidal State in Somalia: The Rise and Fall of the Siad Barre Regime, 1969–1991, University Press of America, 2016. His most recent article on Al-Shabaab, “The Invention of Al-Shabaab: Between the Dervishes and the Historical Configurations in Somalia?”, was published in African Affairs (2018). His research ranges widely and invokes the disciplines of anthropology, history and political science. He has written on cultural, historical, intellectual, legal, maritime, political, and social aspects of Somali society. He locates his work at the intersection of state systems and structures that shape societal changes in Somalia.